Monday night, my friend Lindsay and I went and saw Conan O’Brien’s tour at Ohio State. And it was freaking amazing. I didn’t realize how MUCH I miss the man until that night. I was even excited to see the band! I stood in line for tickets for 4.5 hours and was there 2 hours before the show. The show overall was great. You know what wasn’t great? The opening act. I know Conan and company like him, but I did not find Randy Watts funny. At all. I did some of the awkward laughter, but that was it.

But then Conan came out. And all was forgiven. He came out wearing a number 2 home jersey, and claimed he had been wearing it the entire Tonight Show run, NBC had just blurred it out. He was amazed by the automatic, overwhelming response to every “O-H”, often running to hide behind the band when the nearly 6,000 students responded with “I-O”, and claimed he felt like Mussolini. He did a bit about Ohio State for a while, making fun of President Gordon Gee’s bow ties, and how we’re the only school left in session (true) and that Michigan begged him to come to their school. His refusal was backed up by claiming that he couldn’t go to that school because of the size of the stadium. Any school that has that big of a stadium is clearly compensating for it’s small penis. That got a roar. He then went through the 8 stages of grief, including how he skipped the “blaming yourself” stage, because as he puts it, “what the hell did I do?” (We all know my feelings on that)

The night felt a lot like both the old Late Night show, with apperances by Triumph, the Masturbating Bear (renamed to the Self-Pleasuring Panda) and the Walker Texas Ranger Lever (renamed to the Chuck Norris Rural Policeman Handle) and the days of the writers strike, where Conan did lots of music numbers. He did Elvis’s “Polk-Salad Annie”, “Seven Nation Army”, “On the Road Again” and “I Will Survive” among others.

Andy Richter was there as well, doing a hilarious commercial for local restaurant Thurman’s Cafe and their infamous Thurmanator.

This tour served as a great reminder of how funny Conan is when he’s allowed to be Conan. The man is brilliant. My cheeks hurt from having a giant smile on my face the entire show. I can’t wait for the TBS show in November!